Aggregate level sales and operations planning requires a consensus process to analyze the impact of various factors on finished products. For example, in processes where capacity is a limiting factor and load is generated based on the demand, the load's impact on demand and revenue is difficult to analyze. No easy reverse correlation exists from the load output to the demand input. Current sales and operations planning tools only allow editing of input parameters such as demand and capacity, but not an output parameter such as load. This inability to modify load for accurate demand and revenue impact analysis limits the sales and operation planning (S&OP) consensus process and is undesirable.
Presently, demand and capacity must be modified by trial-and-error because load is not directly editable within current sales and operations planning tools. In converting demand to load, many factors such as, manufacturing or distribution lead-time, subcomponent or resource unit-conversion and process yields are considered. Reverse conversion of load to demand at the aggregate product family level becomes increasingly challenging since these factors cannot be simply aggregated. This inability to determine how a change in load affects product demand and revenue limits the current S&OP process. The present disclosure addresses these, and other, limitations of current sales and operation planning tools.